It’s been a few years since I helped designed a conference from soup to nuts; these days I’m primarily a coach for executives and speakers. That didn’t stop Dr. Susan David from promoting herself to me as a speaker I might want to hire. David is a Harvard Medical School psychologist, and author of Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life. Her TED talk, “The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage,” has had more than 4.8 million views, according to the website. So, her work as a psychologist commands respect, even if the accuracy of her mailing list leaves a little to be desired.
Nonetheless, I decided to review Dr. David’s work hypothetically as if I might want to hire her as a speaker, mostly because life has recently demanded a good deal of emotional agility from me and I thought the TED talk might impart some wisdom. In the process, I found that the example of David’s message and positioning has some useful lessons for speakers looking to climb the greasy pole of keynote speaking themselves.
First of all, let’s be clear that David’s talk is classic TED. It starts with an affecting personal story about her father’s death when she was quite young and wraps her response to that around her broader call for emotional agility in our personal lives and indeed on a global scale. David grew up in apartheid South Africa and manages to demonstrate that she is on the right side of history on that subject without getting bogged down in it. She refers to her own childhood without sidestepping the grief she experienced and yet also managing to bring an appropriate amount of humor to the talk so that it doesn’t become maudlin or self-pitying. And she makes the switch to the larger issue of emotional agility and its application to our lives smoothly and well.
The talk is touching, humane, elegant, helpful, and inspiring. For today’s stressed-out, information-overloaded, overworked employees, it would provide both a welcome break from their routines and also some useful advice on how to weather life’s difficult challenges.
Dr. David gets the job done; mission accomplished. Nonetheless, what struck me about the speech was how well it answers several questions that many clients ask me, especially if they are early in their keynote speaker careers.
First, do I have something original to say? When clients ask this question, they’re asking, at base, do I have something to say that no one has ever said before? In short, is my thinking original? The answer is almost always, no – but it’s the wrong question. In David’s case, the idea of emotional agility is not new. Other excellent books have been written on the subject. Her advice, which is to embrace your emotions, rather than avoid or stuff them, but don’t let them define you, is familiar, oft-repeated advice.
Her thinking is not new, but her voice is unique. Her South African origins and her story about handling real trauma with rigidity first and then finally agility, is compelling and memorable. So the right question is, do I speak with my own voice? And her answer is certainly yes.
Second, do I understand my audience? David shows through her commentary on what we might be facing in our modern, industrialized lives that could require emotionally agile responses that she gets her audience. She’s thought clearly about the points of pain that might bring us to rigidity or agility, and she’s done the research. And the nearly 5 million views of her TED talk reinforce that impression. Understanding your audience is just as important as speaking to that audience with your unique voice. Successful keynote speakers get that way by doing their audience homework — by obsessing about their audiences.
Third, can I deliver a good speech? As regular readers of this blog know, one of my most fundamental tenets is that every communication is two conversations – the content on the one hand and the body language on the other. You have to master both. In fact, the body language always trumps the content when the two are at odds with one another. Thus, in many ways the body language is inevitably more important than the content because it’s almost guaranteed that the two will be in conflict at some point during your talk, and we trust the body language in those moments to tell us the truth about what you mean. In short, always be telling the truth with your body and you won’t get it wrong.
But working all that out is a never-ending job. David’s TED talk is a great example of a well-delivered talk. She’s conversational, sincere, smooth, and assured. She pauses and moves in the right places. And she achieves that consistency I always look for, between content and body language, except occasionally, when her desire to be liked, or at least to be non-threatening, overcomes her need to be authoritative. Not a perfect job, but very good, in short.
Would I hire Dr. David? Absolutely. If your conference attendees or your employees need more emotional agility – and who doesn’t – her talk is a very professionally delivered, useful primer. And even more usefully, perhaps, her example provides a good one for speakers wondering about the shape of their own careers.
Hi Nick
I loved the speaker and the speech. I sensed a Julie Andrews in the role of Mary Poppins type appearance, beautiful, compassionate,caring but no singing, thank Buddha.
I sensed Brene Brown in content and that is no bad thing.
Thank you.
Kindest regards
Johh
Thanks, John!